I wanted to show you more about how they set up the protective ring around the camp and I had a conversation I needed to include too so… we’ll have a girls-talk (sort of) while constructing a protection spell. I hope you can figure out the details from the drawings alone because I’m not going to explain those. We’ll talk about love instead ๏◡๏

I’ve spent… a lot of time preparing the next scene and it’s still far from being done. It’s way harder than I imagined and it takes way too much space… So yeah, I’m struggling, both with the panels and with the lack of time. It’s hard to find the balance, sigh. My fiance is starting work tomorrow too, so life will probably be more hectic and stressful for a little while. Until now he took care of most of the cleaning and cooking duties so that I can draw after work but there’ll be no more of that, I’m afraid ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, I brace myself, grit my teeth and push forward.

LIFE IN JAPAN CORNER #4

We went for a little trip to Kamakura this week since autumn leaves are already very very pretty and it was sunny and warm enough to go to the ocean. Kamakura is a popular tourist destination as it has many temples, huge Buddha statue, ocean, mountains and various other attractions. Us being us, we have our own favorite spots there. Kamakura is only 1 hour train ride from Tokyo but we didn’t leave the train at Kamakura station, we got off at Kita-Kamakura. Usually, almost no one does that but we weren’t so lucky this week – our secret plan to avoid crowds failed and we were standing on a crowded platform, wondering why the hell everyone from Tokyo decided to follow us.

There is a temple right next to the station, it’s called Engakuji and normally it’s not super popular. We like it a lot not only because of that, though. It’s beautiful because it is located kind of inside a valley and buildings are surrounded by the vegetation. A secluded, close-to-nature kind of spot. And that closeness to nature made it so popular this weekend – everyone came to photograph the autumn leaves! Maples were red and very beautiful so I kept staring at them and didn’t notice the people much even though the place was flooded.

Near the temple, there is a hiking trail leading to the great Buddha statue. We weren’t interested in the statue but the trail itself is very cool – it has a small temple on the way and a cafe hidden in the woods! And that cafe is what I really wanted to write about today. Just imagine hiking through the woods and suddenly coming upon a cafe that is located on multiple terraces, right in the forest. Awesome, right? It’s very awesome, I assure you.

After a cup of hot chocolate and apple pie (they ran out of hot wine haha), we came down from the mountains and went to the beach. Kamakura is a crowded place, full of tourists, but if you find your own paths you might discover many lovely, more secluded places, just like this Garden Cafe! (ノ・∀・)ノ

43 comments on “Recipe for a spell”

I would say, sometimes it helps not getting everything explained – and i think the way you are writing its just wouldn’t fit – i mean they are working on the security of the camp, i just can’t imagine they explaining so many times how they do it (your characters are just too intelligent for that ^^

And if your real life is getting to hectic, maybe really do a small pause, i just can’t imagine your readers would start being angry with you, i mean i am more impressed how you are able to keep this quality and consistency up with everything you are going through at the moment O.O You are sure the rumors about you being a robot arent true 😉

And you have no idea how much i would love to visit Japan (your small snippets are just making it more and more interesting for me) – but i have no possibility 🙁

Well, he doesn’t as much not mind the longer ‘walk’, but much rather the longer ‘crawl’, isn’t he?

And what do you mean ‘not the time’?
Has there ever been a better time for terrible jokes and lesser instincts than life or death situations?

Though yeah, Kasper certainly is a sadist.
Usually you would start mixing the concrete (or whatever) only just before you intend to use it, not for potentially hours before it…well, I guess that’s what she gets for disrupting the (brittle) peace of the camp like that. Swift and harsh punishment. 😛

Oooor he just wants to see her handle a stick.

Okay, back from the gutter with you, mind, that’s most likely not it. 😀

And how is it ‘not flattering’ to be attested bravery?
Okay, the choice of words may be a little lacking, but that’s Laura for you. 🙂

Now as for you NI…you keep your head above water and if that means you’ll have to drop something that can easily be picked up again later, so be it.
Don’t you dare to drown, while trying to please everyone.

I once read the following quote:
I do not know a safe way to success, however I do know a certain way to fail.
Step 1: Try to please everyone.

Thing about that is, that it won’t be ‘everyone’ there any more, because ‘everyone’ is defined as the (fortunately finite, but still unmanageable) number of people that want something from you once you have proven that you have something they might want, be it a skill, a possession or an attribute.

What you are suggesting is a remedy to the problem: Do not try to please everyone, but only those who really need/deserve your help, cause all the others either will manage either way (and therefor not complain) or don’t deserve it (those will complain, but they don’t deserve any better. :P)

No, no, what I’m suggesting is to postpone determining what “everyone” is/means, until later. And if at that later time “everyone” turns out to be a more manageable number, like maybe zero or one, well, all the better.
There’s not much of a point to pleasing people from the past anyway.

I wouldn’t say ‘desperate’, I’d say ‘a healthy, heterosexual young man’.
I mean, Ada is an attractive young woman whom he’s had a crush on for years now.
If he went after everything that’s even just halfway female and his age range…THEN I would call him desperate.

Of course I have been misinterpreting the imagery and the texts before, though I don’t see NI correcting me, so I’m guessing that just for once I am likely to be on the spot. 😀

Heh…I see what you mean about the chicken part.
But good for Sofia that she managed to surprise after all, am I right?

Nothing wrong with checking out an attractive ass when an opportunity, erm, “presents” itself… 😉 However, hoping for an otherwise uncomfortable situation to prolong just so he can keep staring — or making a remark about that — do not exactly strike me as entirely healthy.

Maybe “desperate” is not the best word, since that’s more often applied to people craving for *any* attention from the preferred sex. I’m sure there is a better word for someone totally fixated on a particular person to the point of being indifferent and oblivious to others’ interest…

Frankly, I can’t figure him out at all. He doesn’t generally strike me as the kind of looser typically engaging in such pathological behaviour…

Well, yeah, he is trying to be funny — but it’s not working. It’s not funny: it’s creepy. (Again, not the best word, but I can’t think of a better one right now…) We know from similar situations earlier that Ada doesn’t think it funny either — and he knows it too.

It’s a mystery to me. Why does he do these things he knows creep her out? Does he get a kick out of it? Does he think it benefits either him or her in some obscure way?…

Ada here: http://replaycomic.com/comic/it-feels-nice/ “…I imagine you don’t mind the walk”. So he’s basically referring to that. Because he doesn’t mind spending more time together for a change (as opposed to being in the camp with all other people). I didn’t mean it to be creepy. Okay, maybe a tiny little bit. But just a tiny little bit ๏◡๏

You read him well, damn it. Better than I wanted at this point haha. But he knows where the border lies with Ada, if that could creep her out he’d never say it out loud.

I think from all the people I’m trying to please I am the hardest cookie haha, my own ambitions and goals are killing me xD
There’s not much to drop, to be honest. I could stop leaving the house but my fiance would get too depressed. That relationship thing is so time-consuming…

(I wonder if he’ll read this hehehehe….)

But in all seriousness – there’s been a lot of shopping and whatnot recently and I’ll gladly stop. It still takes me a lot of time to find what I need here in Japan… We’ll still need to find and move to a different apartment, buy all the furniture, omg, I don’t even want to think. But then… Maybe then life will leave me alone for a moment lol

Come back to Texas, it’s just not the same since you went away. Before you lose you accent and forget all about the lone star state. There’s a seat for you at the rodeo and we’ve got every slow dance saved…